1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computer systems, and, more particularly, to testing computer systems in a client/server environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computer systems are information handling systems which can be designed to give independent computing power to one user or a plurality of users. Computer systems have attained widespread use in providing computer power to many businesses and institutions. Some important fields in which computer systems have become common include manufacturing monitoring and control; electrical, mechanical, and chemical system design and simulation; and network management and service. Productive processing time is of great importance to the users of computer systems in these and other fields because computer system down time can result in significant costs.
Computer systems are designed to provide a degree of system availability that is necessitated by the applications for which the computer system is intended. High availability (HA) computer systems, as their name implies, are required to be available, or "on," virtually all of the time. Such computer systems (or networks of such computer systems) should be substantially error free or should be capable of recovery from errors. Because computer systems having different hardware and software configurations are often required to interact in various applications, the computer systems should be tested for interactive compatibility prior to their implementation in high cost applications.
Computer systems are often tested using a series of programmable test cases. In one method of testing, the test cases model the input/output (I/O) of the computer system being tested, thereby testing the computer system's functionality and interaction with users and other computer systems. Test cases are often combined into sets of test cases called test suites that are executed by test scripts. Each test suite can exhaustively test an individual facet of a computer system. Multiple test suites can test entire computer systems.
Tools for multi-test execution support are called test harnesses. A test harness directs the execution of test suites and records data from the computer system that is generated as a result of the test cases executed. Test cases are typically run in sequence by the test harness and are easily repeatable when the test harness is used. The test suite may be repeated on a computer system after a specific test case is edited, after the computer system is altered, or after an error occurs with the computer system. Also, the test may be run on separate computer systems, and the results may then be compared to determine system compatibility. Test harnesses such as the International Business Machines (IBM) System Integration Test Bucket (SITB) and the Open Software Foundation (OSF) Test Environment Tool (TET) can perform regression and functional testing on a single system.
If multiple computer systems are required for a particular application, testing is usually performed on each computer system individually. However, because multiple computer system networks such as client/server systems have become common in a variety of computer system applications, a method for incorporating multiple test clients into the test environment is desired.